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Is There A Chance The Universe Isn't What We Think It Is?

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Dreams-Visions said:
you're definitely misremembering.
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Probably, but there is some crazy stat like that which I'm currently blanking on. Anyone know what I'm referring to? My own neurons could use some help connecting at this hour...
 
MWS Natural said:
New York to LA seemed far 100 years ago. We'll get it figured out, just not in our lifetime.
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Nah there's always going to be some new frontier. Say we figure out the complete dimensions of the universe, and a complete history of it going back to the big bang. Well what's outside the universe? What happened before the big bang. Even if we figure out the universe, "existance" is unlikely to be solved completely.
 
BocoDragon said:
Nah there's always going to be some new frontier. Say we figure out the complete dimensions of the universe, and a complete history of it going back to the big bang. Well what's outside the universe? What happened before the big bang. Even if we figure out the universe, "existance" is unlikely to be solved completely.
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Eventually we will figure it all out and truly become God. Then we will create our own universes to "play" with.
 
CartridgeBlower said:
Anyway, I once heard there were more neuron connections in a single human brain than atoms in the universe. Am I remembering that right or did I just mash two things together in my own brain and come up with some nonsense right there?
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You're remembering wrong.

Think about it logically for a second. It is obviously paradoxical.
 
Chuck Norris said:
Does the universe really exist if you don't have the five human senses?
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If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The answer is yes. The world universe doesn't revolve around us.
 
Raistlin said:
You're remembering wrong.

Think about it logically for a second. It is obviously paradoxical.
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It might be, but I don't think for the reason you're thinking of. I didn't say 'neurons,' I said 'neuron connections.' If I take x amount of neurons, there are an exponential amount of connections between them that are far greater than the actual number of neurons being used to form those connections.
 
bananas said:
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The answer is yes. The world universe doesn't revolve around us.
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How do you know we don't perceive the Universe inaccurately because of our senses? How do you know a different set of senses wouldn't allow us to view the universe as something totally different?
 
what, you mean like someone making a tv screen that wraps our whole world and make it seem like there are actually other stars and planets out there but we're actually just looking closer and closer at a 3d projection coming off of a screen to make us think there's something else other than the immediate solor system?
 
CartridgeBlower said:
It might be,
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It isn't a might, it is.

but I don't think for the reason you're thinking of. I didn't say 'neurons,' I said 'neuron connections.'

If I take x amount of neurons, there are an exponential amount of connections between them that are far greater than the actual number of neurons forming those connections.
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The problem is we can see synapses under a microscope. Let's say there can be several dozen or more per neuron. The thing is each neuron itself is made of atoms ... lots of them. These atoms combine into molecules ... which form cells ... which then make up each part of a neuron.

An average cell is something like 200 trillion atoms. Then there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 trillion cells in the human body. So you're looking at 200 septillion atoms in the average human body (2 with 24 zeros after it). This is all before considering all the other matter in the universe beyond a single human. So I think you can see where I'm going.



You're probably thinking about one of those silly things like 'each cell in the human body contains about 100 times as many atoms as there are stars in the Milky Way'.
 
So what do you guys think would be more likely: Multiverse (many/infinite) or just a Parallel universe? Like in Fringe.
 
Blitz2o said:
So what do you guys think would be more likely: Multiverse (many/infinite) or just a Parallel universe? Like in Fringe.
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Fringe is a multiverse ... Walter looked at several of them IIRC. It's just a single one he physically entered and therefore entangled.
 
Holy shit. Some of your guys theories are awesome to think about regardless of the validity of them.

I can't begin to comprehend what the universe is. I don't even know what we think it is.
 
Raistlin said:
Fringe is a multiverse ... Walter looked at several of them IIRC. It's just a single one he physically entered and therefore entangled.
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Oh I wasn't aware of that, You could very well be right. I don't really recall precisely if Walter said there were more. I always just assumed there were just the 2.

but I'm still curious, what's more likely, one single universe or a vast multitude?
 
Blitz2o said:
Oh I wasn't aware of that, You could very well be right. I don't really recall precisely if Walter said there were more. I always just assumed there were just the 2.

but I'm still curious, what's more likely, one single universe or a vast multitude?
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I could be remembering it wrong, but I thought he looked into a number of universes with that window device. IIRC some didn't even have Peters in them at all, in some he already died, etc?
 
Raistlin said:
I could be remembering it wrong, but I thought he looked into a number of universes with that window device. IIRC some didn't even have Peters in them at all, in some he already died, etc?
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some didn't have peters? that's good then. I was beginning to wonder how they could do multiple universes and keep all the same characters. but logical variation and different variables in the past would make the present different for each universe.
 
Raistlin said:
It isn't a might, it is.


The problem is we can see synapses under a microscope. Let's say there can be several dozen or more per neuron. The thing is each neuron itself is made of atoms ... lots of them. These atoms combine into molecules ... which form cells ... which then make up each part of a neuron.

An average cell is something like 200 trillion atoms. Then there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 trillion cells in the human body. So you're looking at 200 septillion atoms in the average human body (2 with 24 zeros after it). This is all before considering all the other matter in the universe beyond a single human. So I think you can see where I'm going.



You're probably thinking about one of those silly things like 'each cell in the human body contains about 100 times as many atoms as there are stars in the Milky Way'.
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http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jan99/915377761.Ns.r.html

Grabbed that off google, but there are many more articles and discussions on it. So, yes, while it may still be 'silly,' I clearly didn't make it up.
 
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think itÂ’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but thatÂ’s just peanuts to space.
 
DanteFox said:
Your statement disproves itself. It's like saying "this statement is false."
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What you're saying is the point of my statement.

I already know where you're coming from.
 
UnblessedSoul said:
We know nothing about space, its all mostly vague guesses, looking through a telescope can only do so much
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lol scientific theories are more than just vague guesses.
 
I'm certain that the general idea we have isn't too far from the truth. There's still a lot of details missing, and they're not unimportant at all, but the basic outline is probably what we'll ever know about this all under the circumstances.

Like, there's suns and galaxies and black holes and shit. Planets. Gravity. Spacetime.

So if that all is true, I don't think it's really that much of a mindblower if the universe is actually 10^34 times larger or smaller. The things we cannot reach are still things, so there's no need to start crying or anything.
 
zoukka said:
People from the future will laugh at our current knowledge.
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I don't see anyone laughing at Newton. The basic idea is still valid, it's just that when you dive down into the details, it isn't accurate anymore.

A lot of observations made long ago still hold true, and will probably hold true for a long time to come. There's no need to be cynical about everything all the time..
 
CartridgeBlower said:
I'm a complete novice when it comes to astronomy, and that's partially why I'm asking.

But every time I watch a Nova, or read up on it, my brain is unable to comprehend how gigantic they tell us the universe really is.

Knowing very little about dark matter and dark energy, I still want to ask -- is there anyway these things could change the way we understand the universe -- in the idea that the universe is actually much SMALLER than we currently believe?

And if so, are there any current theories or scientists pushing through any schools of thought on this?

I'd like to hear an educated counter-argument to the usual 20th century 'the universe is infinitely expanding' argument. But does one even exist?
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Just about the only way that could be the case is if we all lived in a simulation and nothing beyond our solar system is actually real.

The evidence to suggest that the universe is 13.7 Billion years old and the Observable Universe is 46 billion lightyears in diameter is basically rock solid. Note, that's OBSERVABLE. The actual universe is far larger, but is retreating from us so fast we will never be able to glean any information about it.
 
Alongside the Big-Bang and the Steady-State theories was an idea of "oscillating" universes. Universes that would expand with a big-bang and end with a "big-crunch" and repeat infinitely. This theory (along with Steady-state) was disproved by observations (microwave background radiation and so forth). A few months back I heard of some physicists finding new evidence that supports the oscillating universe theory (or a modern iteration of it), but I never bothered following up on it. Maybe that's what you are looking for? I have no idea if the findings had any merit. So you may want to disregard this post completely. I'm probably just making shit up.
 
bananas said:
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The answer is yes. The world universe doesn't revolve around us.
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The Universe you experience only exists in your brain. If no one is around to hear it fall then to them the tree made no sound. That's the entire point of the saying.

There's no way for you to objectively know that something exists beyond yourself. We just trust the sensory input that our senses feed to us because that is the only thing we can process.
 
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